08/09/2026
Meet the crew responsible for every pumpkin and squash we harvest this fall.
Each summer, 250 honeybee colonies come to work the fields, roughly 50,000 bees per colony, covering about two acres each. They're brought in and looked after by Andy Miller, a crop consultant for the farm who's been keeping bees alongside his wife Janelle for the last ten years.
Squash and pumpkin flowers are male and female, and they open for a single day. One shot. The flowers offer nectar; the bees carry it home in their honey stomachs for energy and honey, and pollen goes back on their legs as protein for the young. Along the way, pollen catches on their hairs and moves flower to flower, and that's pollination.
Butternut, acorn, spaghetti, kabocha, delicata, yellow squash, zucchini, pumpkins. Without bees, none of it grows.
